Against the Law
Pagevii(8 of 289)

I T WAS STEVE'S idea. It was Pierre's organization. It was Paul's passio so this book-a product of a rather odd and improbable combinat authors-came together. There were doubts throughout. Steve was concerned that the relentlessly critical tone of the book wo damaging. He worried half seriously, half in jest, that a conservative t would become associated in a joint enterprise with one of the most irre and intellectually radical (if not nihilistic) thinkers on the contemporary ican legal scene. Indeed, he had already received negative and cautionar tions from older, wiser colleagues at another law school: "Stay away from street toughs." Pierre too was concerned. He had been told not to publish with the two. Yet here he was publishing with one of the most conservative reactionary) constitutional thinkers in American legal thought. He w that this would be deeply confusing to readers. And he worried th book would simply be exhibit A in the usual left or liberal charge that intellectualism is simply neoconservatism by any other name. Paul, who refused to divulge his political orientation to anyone (inc the other two authors), didn't worry at all. And all three of us decided to go forward with the book. One reason, of course, was a shared sense of the deadening quality o temporary political orthodoxies and their disputes. In some sense, e us has been unwilling to simply toe the line of any political ortho reactionary, conservative, liberal, or radical. None of us seems to be ver at being a foot soldier. And being in Colorado, we are much too far awa anywhere to feel the civilizing effects of the great institutions. A second, perhaps more profound reason is that despite our widely di political visions, there are certain things we share in common-certain standings of the shortcomings of American legalism. We all think that le is aesthetically, ethically, and intellectually lacking in rather profound